My name is Dr. Charity Wilson. I’m the family medicine physician at the Field Medical Associates at the Veranda. I want to talk briefly about why I decided to come back home. I am originally from Albany. I actually was delivered at Phoebe Putney Hospital which is interesting because later on that’s where I wound up working. When I grew up I knew that I wanted to go into the medical field; I just didn’t know exactly; I didn’t realize I was going to go all the way to med school. I was a product of public education here in Albany and when I went off to college I knew—I was thinking maybe nursing or PA, but I was helped by folks that were pre-med so I was like what the heck, go to med school.

And once I was in medical school I knew that primary care was what I really wanted to do. And I think—I kept in my head imagining practicing in Albany and practicing in my hometown. And that’s kind of what motivated me the whole time to go through. I think being a primary care physician, the setting in Albany is perfect; and that I’m not the only doc in town, and I don’t have folks knocking on my door in the middle of the night. I have a life and I have some time off and that to me was important being a female and having a baby; that was really important.

But also we’re not overwhelmed with specialists in that I still have to use my brain. I still, you know, I’m not just quick to refer every patient out to a specialist, and if you’re in a larger town you have that. So it’s a challenge but not too much of a challenge. I think the reason Albany makes trouble to recruit physicians in town is—one, I think, you know, you may grow up in Albany and you go off to school, and you’re in a bigger town and you get used to that type of lifestyle. Folks may marry someone from those towns and it may not pull them back in. They may go into a specialty that just may not necessarily fit well in Albany. We don’t need a lot of pediatric cardio-thoracic surgeons here in Albany; there’s just not a need. So if I had a love for that I wouldn’t be coming back. But it worked perfectly for family medicine.

I think as far as the medical community I think we’re pretty tight knit. I think if you have someone coming in young, let’s say that they’re young and single and they’re used to a large town, it may be hard socially for them to settle in. I think it’s important for those of us that are still young to kind of adopt those people and say here, you know, Albany is great. You’re just going to need to look and find those people and get involved. I think if you wait for something to fall in your lap it’s not going to happen, and there are a lot of good opportunities in Albany socially, a lot of good organizations to get involved with. And I think working in Albany as a primary care doctor I think is a great place to be. I think those that are coming in new, not new to the area, need to actively try to get settled into the community really. I think if we do that we can keep those good doctors here in town.